Tips from the AEJMC Teaching Committee
Some Thoughts on Advising
By Natalie Tindall
AEJMC Standing Committee on Teaching
Chair
Department of Communication
Lamar University
(Article courtesy of AEJMC News, January 2018 issue)
Academics have an opinion on everything, including the issue of faculty advising. Some of us would prefer to advise the students in their departments from the moment they step on campus until the moment they walk across the stage. Some of us would rather chew glass than add another layer of work and work-related stress on top of the triad of teaching, research, and service. Some people don’t know what advising is or looks like, but they are terrified of it in any form.
Now here is what the president of a national advising association said about faculty advising: “When it comes to helping students be engaged, to give them advice about what they need to do outside the classroom, faculty are not always the best,” said Charlie L. Nutt, executive director of the National Academic Advising Association, which represents professional advisers. “It’s not because they don’t care, but because they are hired to teach a specific set of courses. So they end up advising like they were advised in college: They give students a schedule and send them on their way.”
Ouch. That hurts. We can do better than that.
Many of us are required to do formal advising – the make-an-appointment-and-let’s-look-at-classes advising. Research on the topic of advising finds that these interstitial, informal advising moments as well as the more formal appointments play a role in promoting student success (Light, 2001), retaining college students (Feghali, Zbib, & Hallal, 2011) and bonding students to the university (Heisserer, 2002).
Whatever your opinion is and whatever your title and role is on campus, faculty can do more with advising. Here are some tips and ideas. I hope this advice helps makes your spring 2018 advising a bit smoother and less hectic.
Understand the value and weight of advising. Kennemer and Hurt (2013) recognized that faculty priorities may not be solely focused on advising: “the quality of faculty advising can be impacted by the lack of reward for advising…Tenure track faculty are typically consumed with other responsibilities including teaching, scholarship, and service. In many cases, exceptional advising and out of classroom access to students is expected but has no real impact towards the tenure or promotion process.” Delve into your the promotion and tenure guidelines for your unit and the faculty handbook and note how advising is counted. If there are no specific, clear expectations for advising, the authors advocate for faculty to “[w]ork with appropriate colleagues and campus administrators to make advising part of reappointment / promotion / tenure criteria.”
Know your role. Faculty and graduate students are not professional advisors, and that is important to note. We should know what perspectives exist on advising as well as best practices for working with undergraduate students. Montag et al. (2012) outlined the three orientations toward advising: prescriptive, developmental, and praxis. Crockett (1987) believed that the best role for faculty to assume is the developmental role where the faculty is a guide/mentor. That role may not work for all faculty. Some faculty might only be information centers, and “Disseminating accurate information such as degree plans and institutional deadlines is important, especially early in the advising relationship” (Kennemer & Hurt, 2013). This is known as prescriptive advising. Finally, other faculty members may choose a hybrid method known as praxis advising, where “advisors give students expert advice on course selection, but also engage them in discussions about their declared major” (Montag et al., 2012, p. 27). Whatever your preferred role is, it may shift dependent on the context and the student (Smith, 2002).
Be prepared. Brush up on your institution’s requirements and your department’s requirements. Know who you are meeting with and review their status, current classes and degree plan. Also, be aware of additional resources on campus that may be helpful and necessary for students (e.g., the Student Health Center, Counseling Center, Office of Disability Support Services, Tutoring Center).
Document the appointment. Take thorough notes on what happened in the meeting. Place in the student’s paper file or electronic file so other faculty members or advisors have a record of what was shared. You may want to email or copy the notes for the student as well, so they can keep a personal archive of their progress toward graduation. As a department chair who has to validate students for graduation, I appreciate a complete set of advising notes in a student file.
Ask that your students be an active participant in the advising process. Crockett (1987) considered an effective advising situation to be one where all of those involved assume certain responsibilities and complete those responsibilities. For your students, their responsibilities should include thinking about the purpose of the advising appointment, having a list of questions or concerns, reviewing their transcript/degree audit for missing classes, and knowing which classes they would like to take during the next semester. The student handbook my department is developing gives students a checklist of things to do to prepare for an advising session.
Advising is not a one-time event. Developing a relationship, especially a student-faculty advisor relationship, requires commitment, trust, and satisfaction. For a student to develop a trusting connection, he/she will need to have frequent interactions with the advisor. Faculty can encourage this by contacting the students via email, opening up office hours for drop-in advising appointments.
Consider your professional liabilities. Many universities are moving to having all or part of advising done by people with the time and expertise to advise on pathways and document these interactions with students. Juggling multiple student appointments between teaching, research and service responsibilities can set up a faculty member for exhaustion as well as making mistakes. No one wants to make an error that would prevent a student from progressing in a degree plan or graduating, but mistakes can and do happen. Just in case, I would recommend that you consider professional liability insurance.
Look for discipline-specific advising assistance. Although we are not trained to do advising in most graduate programs, all of us – graduate students, instructors, tenured and tenure-track faculty – will advise students informally. We will receive questions about which classes to take, which professors (in other departments, of course) to avoid, and what I should do with my life, and we will try our best to answer those questions. If you cannot find any, ask your organization or divisions to provide relevant, specific help via the annual conference, webinars and task forces/committees.
References
Crockett, D. S. (1987). Advising skills, techniques and resources: A compilation of materials related to the organization and delivery of advising services. Iowa City: ACT Corporation.
Feghali, T., Zbib, I., & Hallal, S. (2011). A web-based decision support tool for academic advising. Educational Technology & Society, 14(1), 82.94.
Heisserer, D. L., & Parette, P. (2002). Advising at-risk students in college and university settings. College Student Journal, 36(1), 69-84.
Kennemer, C., & Hurt, B. (2013). Faculty advising. Retrieved from http://www.nacada.ksu.edu/Resources/Clearinghouse/View-Articles/Facultyadvising.aspx
Light, R.J. (2001). Making the Most of College: Students Speak Their Minds. Boston: Harvard University Press.
Montag, T., Campo, J., Weissman, J., Walmsley, A., & Snell, A. (2012). In their own words: Best practices for advising millennial students about majors. NACADA Journal, 32(2), 26-35.
Selingo, J. (2014, April 13). Who advises best, pros or profs? Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/education/edlife/who-advises-best-pros-orprofs.html?_r=0
Smith, J. S. (2002). First-year student perceptions of academic advisement: A qualitative study and reality check. NACADA Journal, 22(2), 39-49
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